This invention relates to improvements in a medicine administering device suitable for administering powdery medicine into the nasal cavities of a patient.
In general, to cure patients suffering from nasal allergy or the like, curing methods in which powdery medicine is administered through nasal cavities of the patients have been employed. In these curing methods, exclusive medicine administering devices or sprayers have been used to administer the powdery medicine into the nasal cavities. Here, the medicine administering devices used in these methods includes a medicine administering device main body which is formed with a powdery medicine accommodating chamber for accommodating powdery medicine therein. The tip end side of the medicine administering device main body is formed as a spray nozzle through which the powdery medicine is sprayed. A pump is disposed at the base end side of the medicine administering device and arranged to discharge air stored inside the pump through the powdery medicine accommodating chamber into the (single) spray nozzle upon being pressed from the outside. Such a medicine administering device is disclosed in Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. 3-66382.
In order to administer the powdery medicine into the nasal cavities by using the above conventional medicine administering device, first the spray nozzle is inserted into one of left and right nasal cavities. Then, in this state, a movable diaphragm body constituting the pump is put between fingers of the patent and pressed in a manner to collapse the movable diaphragm body. By this, air stored inside the pump is discharged toward the powdery medicine accommodating chamber, so that the powdery medicine within the powdery medicine accommodating chamber is sprayed through the spray nozzle into the nasal cavity under the influence of the discharged air. Subsequently, after the powdery medicine has been administered into the one of the nasal cavities, the spray nozzle is pulled out of the one nasal cavity, and then inserted into the other nasal cavity, upon which the pump is pressed to be operated thereby administering the powdery medicine into the nasal cavity. Thereafter, alternate insertion of the spray nozzle is repeated several times to each of the left and right nasal cavities thereby completing a medicine administration operation to the both nasal cavities.
Now, with the above conventional medicine administering device, the single nozzle is repeatedly inserted alternately into the left and right nasal cavities. However, when the first powdery medicine administration is made, a large amount of the powdery medicine exists in the powdery medicine accommodating chamber, so that a relatively large amount of the powdery medicine is sprayed. When the second, third, fourth, . . . powdery medicine administrations are made, the amount of the powdery medicine existing in the powdery medicine accommodating chamber becomes small, and therefore the amounts of the powdery medicine administered into the nasal cavities are stepwise decreased.
As a result, in case that the left and right nasal cavities are alternately supplied with the powdery medicine, it is difficult to administer equally the powdery medicine into both the nasal cavities. In this regard, the patient is required to contrive a suitable medicine administration operation manner or order for the left and right nasal cavities, for example, to administer the powdery medicine twice into the right nasal cavity after administering the powdery medicine once into the left nasal cavity, and then to administer the powdery medicine once more into the left nasal cavity. Additionally, this requires plural medicine administration operations, so that the medicine administration operation becomes troublesome. Furthermore, even in case that the medicine administration operation has been contrived as discussed above, the amount of the sprayed powdery medicine unavoidably changes depending upon the degree of force for pressing the pump. As a result, there arises the problem that the powdery medicine cannot be necessarily administered equally to the left and right nasal cavities.